Page 45 of No One Can Know

Emma knelt in the garden bed midmorning, pulling up weeds and tossing them into the bucket at her side. Sweat trickled down her neck, slipping beneath the collar of her shirt. Above the front door, the blank black eye of the camera stared down at her. She kept glancing at it. Ever since Nathan had pulled his little trick with the phone tracker, she’d felt like she was being watched at all times. It should have been easy to feel swallowed up in that big house, but she imagined him monitoring the sound of her footsteps and felt his attention on her, inescapable.

The sound of a car turning into the drive brought her twisting around. It was a blue hybrid, nearly new. JJ was behind the wheel. She parked ten feet from Emma and got out, shading her eyes. Emma stayed where she was, kneeling in the dirt.

“I come in peace,” she said. She pulled something from her pocketand held it up pinched between her thumb and forefinger. A key. “Nathan asked if I had keys to the carriage house. Asked me to bring them by.”

“He’s not here,” Emma said. It seemed like he never was anymore. She stood, brushing dirt from her knees. As she rose, spots appeared in her vision. She wobbled.

“Whoa,” JJ said, striding quickly over to her and reaching to take her arm. Emma yanked it away, which only made her almost topple over again, dizziness sweeping over her. JJ reached for her arm again and this time snagged it, keeping her steady. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Emma snapped, except that her vision wasn’t clearing.

“Come here. Put your head between your legs,” JJ said, guiding her firmly over to the steps. Emma sank down in the shade, not out of obedience but because if she didn’t, she was going to fall over anyway. JJ left her there, reappearing moments later with a glass of water. JJ hovered awkwardly as Emma took a sip, then handed it back.

“Thanks.”

“You should be careful. Sunstroke’s no joke,” JJ said with the fleeting edge of a smile. Emma grunted. She levered herself up to her feet, but it was a mistake—her knees went rubbery immediately.

“Help me inside, will you?” she asked.

JJ looped an arm around Emma’s waist, silently helping her up the steps and through the door. With the window AC they’d bought on credit, the house was slightly more tolerable than the outside, and JJ helped her into the living room and onto the couch.

A headache pounded behind Emma’s eyes. She tried to sip the water, but it only turned her stomach again. She hated that JJ was here, seeing her like this.

“This is your fault,” she muttered, splaying her hand against her abdomen.

“How is this my fault?” JJ asked, affronted.

Emma waved a hand. “Not you. The spawn.”

It still felt more like a flu than a future. A collection of symptomsthat would fade. Nathan didn’t talk about the baby or the future, either. He used to—lying awake at night, fantasizing about the children they would have and the lives they would live. But as soon as it became real, he’d gone quiet.

“Nathan mentioned,” JJ said. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah. Well. I can’t possibly be a worse parent than ours were, right?” Emma asked. JJ snorted, and their eyes met in a brief moment of understanding. Then JJ’s expression shuttered again.

“When’s the last time you ate anything?” JJ asked.

“Toast when I woke up. Nibbled on some crackers,” Emma said. “Haven’t managed anything else.” It wasn’t even that she felt sick, exactly, just that her body seemed physically incapable of allowing her to bring food to her mouth. Like it could tell that she was somewhere unfamiliar. Somewhere unsafe.

She eased herself upright. JJ stiffened, but the wooziness had passed. Emma moved gingerly deeper into the house. “Did you need anything else?” she asked.

“Just dropping off the keys,” JJ said, trailing behind. In the great room she halted, looking around. “I didn’t really stop to see anything the other day. It’s weird, being in here again.”

“Did you ever come back?” Emma asked.

“Hell no,” JJ said. “Did you?”

Emma shook her head. “No reason to.”

JJ drifted toward the right-hand hallway, which led to the living room and their father’s study. The hall where they’d found their mother. “It was here,” she said, looking down at the stain.

Emma joined her, setting her glass on the closed lid of the piano as she passed. “We tried to get the stain out, but it looks like we’re going to have to patch the whole section of floor,” she said.

Juliette rubbed a toe idly against the edge of the dark blotch. “And Dad was…” She moved forward with an unhurried kind of purpose. She pushed open the office door but stayed back. Emma joined her.

The room was arranged around that spot, now bare, from which heruled his kingdom. They hadn’t been allowed in here without explicit invitation. Now JJ stepped cautiously over the threshold.

“He was facing away from the door,” she said. She lifted her hand, almost as if she were holding a gun. Barrel to the back of the head, boom. She seemed to realize what she was doing and dropped her hand, then walked quickly over to the wall and set her fingers against a gouge in the wainscotting. “This must be where the bullet lodged.”

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